


Striae

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers
Genre: Body Image, Embarrassment, First Kiss, Insecurity, M/M, Misunderstandings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Shame, stretch marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 23:53:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11172720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: Skull doesn't actually know what stretch marks are and is shocked to see what he thinks are scars all over Bulk. This is not really conducive to good self esteem for Bulk.





	Striae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellipsesificate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellipsesificate/gifts).



If nothing else, it wasn’t a glowing endorsement of his sewing that Bulk had started to have to carry spare pants around with him in his bag. You’d think that his pants ripping in front of the entire juice bar every other week would be good enough incentive to step up his home ec game, but his rough and ready repair jobs never seemed to hold up to much abuse. 

Skull had shielded him from view and hustled him off to the bathroom and, once they were inside and had peered under the stalls to make sure they didn’t see any feet, taken up position guarding the door to protect him from further gawking. 

Gawking from third parties anyway. 

Bulk tried to avoid thinking about how he could feel Skull’s eyes glued to him as he shucked off his ruined jeans and kicked them towards his open backpack, but as he bent down to fish his spare jeans out of his bag Skull audibly gasped behind him. He heard three long steps and then without any other warning Skull’s cold hands were on him. 

"Bulky, what happened to you?" he asked with naked horror in his voice. 

He had no idea what Skull was talking about and the unexpected physical contact was shorting out his higher cognitive functions. He shot upright so that he could now feel the heat of Skull all up against his back.

"What?" 

Skull ignored his question while he took a step back and pushed his t-shirt up higher. Bulk could feel the tips of his fingers tracing a line up around his hip. 

"You never told me about this," Skull said, still sounding shocked. "Some of them must be from a long time ago, they’re white! Did- did you- did someone..?"

Realisation dawned. 

Bulk pulled down sharply on his t-shirt and turned around.

"They’re stretch marks," he said. "It’s normal—ask your mom."

Skull started to lift a corner of his t-shirt again to see and his brow creased at the sight of what he found. He reached out his hand to lay it against Bulk’s lower belly and he rubbed his thumb against one of the many red lines carving a path across Bulk’s skin. Shame and a stray coil of something else churned through Bulk’s stomach at Skull’s touch. 

"Did it hurt?" Skull asked softly, looking up at Bulk with the worst expression of tender concern he had ever seen. "Did you bleed?"

"No!" Bulk pushed Skull’s hand away. Skull’s face fell. 

Stupid skinny big-hearted son of a bitch. 

"Nothing hurt me," Bulk said firmly. "This is what happens to skin if you gain weight or lose weight or sometimes if you hit a growth spurt. It’s not painful, just not pretty." 

"Oh," Skull said with a relieved sigh. "Phew. I thought you’d had a tiger take a couple of swipes at you or somethin’." 

He slipped his hand under Bulk’s t-shirt again and gave his hip a little squeeze. Bulk decided to allow the liberty for as long as it took Skull to reassure himself, but just then the door started to open. Their heads swung around to see Jason walking in.

"Occupied!" Bulk shouted.

Jason backed into the door and then turned around and walked into it.

"Okay," he said. "Sorry, guys, I’ll just… sorry." 

Once Jason was out of the room, Skull started to laugh.

"Oh man," he said. "Sorry, I forgot about the door. I was still mostly blocking you from him though, it’s okay." 

Bulk thought about yelling at him, but goddamnit if he was going to explain what Jason thought he saw when he’d already had to explain the way the non-stick people live to Skull in one afternoon. 

"Just get back over there," he snapped. "Don’t let anyone else in until I’m dressed." 

*

He wasn’t in total denial. He wasn’t about to tell anybody, but he knew that he maybe wouldn’t have minded if the thing that Jason had quietly taken him aside to promise he’d never tell anyone about had really happened.

Skull’s hands under his clothes while he was half dressed in a public bathroom. 

Close. But really no cigar. 

It was like a funhouse mirror version of what he wanted. Skull gasping… because he thought Bulk looked like someone had hurt him. Skull touching him, but out of _pity_. 

Skull did love him. He really loved him. He’d obviously been distraught when he thought that someone or something had given Bulk scars. 

But he didn’t- he wouldn’t ever-

Bulk turned around and hit his wall hard enough to break the skin on his knuckles. 

*

The next day, as Skull turned Bulk’s hand over in his own and frowned at the scabs across his knuckles, Bulk considered that he really should nip this in the bud. He didn’t want to go down the road of letting himself get hurt so that Skull would touch him. He had some pride. 

"Hey, Bulky," Skull said suddenly. "I have some stretch marks on my back! They’re pretty faded, but I can see them in the mirror if I twist around. You think they’re probably from getting taller when I hit puberty?"

"Well, yeah," Bulk replied. "Like I said, they’re pretty normal. It’s just as well you saw mine before some girl took her clothes off for you and you ruined it by sobbing all over her body." 

"How’d you mean?" Skull asked. "She could have explained like you did."

"Yeah, she could," Bulk said. "Or you could hurt her feelings and she could be so offended that she never spoke to you again."

"Oh…" Skull said. His face creased over in thought. "I suppose."

"Well, you know… happy to help," Bulk gestured lazily with his injured hand. 

"Hey," Skull caught his hand again. "Did I hurt your feelings?"

"What?" Bulk scoffed. He ignored the sudden twist in his stomach. "No. I’m not gonna cry because you don’t think I’m beautiful. I’m a dude."

Skull’s frown deepened. 

"I don’t not think that," he said stubbornly. 

Bulk wasted a second trying to parse the double negative, moving his lips soundlessly, before he frowned back at Skull himself. 

"I’m fine, Skullovitch," he said. "I don’t need you to butter me up." 

Skull looked like he had something else to say, but then he just nodded. For a second they just sat there, still holding hands because Skull had forgotten to let him go.

"I didn’t think it looked bad," Skull said. "I just didn’t know."

"Well I didn’t have any illusions about being a male model that you shattered or anything," Bulk said. 

"I-" Skull stopped himself. "I like the way you look. Don’t you?" 

"Do I need to remind you that we’re guys again?" Bulk muttered under his breath. 

"Yeah, but I like the way I look," Skull said with a shrug. "And I’m a guy."

Bulk strangled a smile before it made it onto his face. Skull usually took three times as long as him to get ready and went to fix his hair at every opportunity.

"I guess you do," he said.

"So do you?" Skull said. He wasn’t letting this drop apparently.

"I don’t know!" Bulk shrugged. "I don’t think about my looks. I have a body, it’s where I live. It looks thusly." 

He waved a hand up and down his body. Skull frowned at him again. 

"Why do care if I like how I look? And why do you like the way I look, allegedly?" Bulk said, turning it back on him.

Pink touched Skull’s cheekbones and he swallowed.

"I dunno. I just do," he said. "I think you’re- I-"

Bulk snorted. "Yeah that’s what I th-"

In a second, Skull reached out, smoothed his hands down Bulk’s chest and ducked forward to press a kiss against the corner of his mouth before Bulk could finish his sentence. 

They were quiet again for a second. 

"Is- is that okay?" he asked. He was just inches from Bulk’s face now, fingers wound into the front of his t-shirt. 

"Yeah," Bulk replied quietly. "Yeah, that’s okay." 

A slow grin broke out across Skull’s face and he closed the distance between them again. 

As Bulk kissed him back, he could feel Skull’s hands slipping under his shirt again and spanning his hips. 

Skull hummed contentedly against his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic was indirectly inspired by a story someone told me about the first time he slept with his college girlfriend and _he_ didn't know what stretch marks were and was Very Worried about the potential tiger attacks in her past and the time someone saw my own stripy hip and had similar concerns about me. Also, while I like Bulk being 100% confident in canon I also like to inflict my own issues on him for fun imaginary times, albeit tempered with Skull thinking he's a complete hunk and having zero conception that there's anything wrong with Bulk being fat.


End file.
